


your hand (my heart).

by Prettything_uglylie



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Handholding, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inner Dialogue, M/M, Mutual Pining, No Dialogue, Pining, The Intimacy of Handholding, Too Much Analysis, Underage Drug Use, Yearning, it's about the yearning, jj wears rings and pope thinks about it, yeah guys this is a fic where pope (and i) freak out over jj's rings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:20:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24511435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prettything_uglylie/pseuds/Prettything_uglylie
Summary: JJ wears a lot of rings, he thinks, suddenly dizzy...
Relationships: JJ Maybank/Pope Heyward, JJ/Pope (Outer Banks)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 117





	your hand (my heart).

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where this would fit in canon and I just,, guess I don't care? Please enjoy it!

Pope is staring at _his_ hand and they're both tripping on something that JJ had held in his thumb and pointer finger with all the certainty that someone who knows what they're doing has. He had meant to ask what it was again but between the colors spiraling in their minds and the feeling of being weightless, it feels like there is no limit, like it doesn't matter. It feels so free like they are both floating and that all they have around them is time and energy thrumming through the other back into themselves. They feel connected, in a bizarre way. 

JJ feels palpable there, more than his physical body but his physical body is even more panic-inducing than his energy, which holds the same ferocity as the thrum of electricity on nearby power towers or wrapped around fences that they've attempted to hop and - and for a moment, he remembers JJ's hands pulling him down when his shorts had gotten caught - or the feeling of electricity he had been that night on the beach, gun in his hand and anxiety up, all wounded animal lashing out for John B. There had been a reason Pope had found himself unable to breathe that night - he wonders if JJ would have noticed if he had stopped. 

But neither of them are really grounded here, both beyond themselves and the cotton warm feeling wrapped around them like a blanket fresh out of the dryer. Both of them are tripping and falling as they lay here, minds grounded by the pressure of one another but a thousand miles away in the clouds. He thinks of blankets fresh from the dryer, thinks of JJ's ringed fingers folding the gentle wool of one of John B.'s heavier duty blankets into a more proper square and it had been such a contrast to watch JJ's tanned and ringed fingers fold with an elegantly balanced intention behind them. 

It had been the same feeling he had when JJ had cupped his neck, the cold silver that lines almost all of his fingers - Pope could tell you the stories behind most of them - pressing into his throat in every way except threatening, it had not been a vice or a barrel or something dangerous but a shock, a reminder, an _oh-hello-i'm-so-sorry-i-forgot-these-hands-were-capable-of-tender-things-my-dear_ apology rather than fear sinking in. 

He finds himself staring at JJ's hands. The silver and black of a few of them wrap around JJ's tanned digits and he's oddly mesmerized, reminded of that game cat's cradle where you would tie the pattern of strings carefully around each finger but here - here is _JJ_. JJ, silver-wrapped and when he had joked about cat's cradle, had asked, 'the fuck is that?' with all the class awarded to a boy who had never had the chance to be just that - a boy, a child. 

He finds himself staring at the way the shades have melted over his fingers and molded into a design just for him - which is absolute bullshit too, because Pope _knows_ that at least two of those rings he wears sometimes, JJ stole. The one on his thumb is a solid metal number, scratched up around the sides from knicks and casual bad behavior as well as its craftsmanship, and Pope knows that it was built specifically for JJ by a boy in one of his classes that, if Pope admitted, had a bad crush on the surfer boy. JJ's casual _thanks_ had implied he had not understood the weight of the gift but he wears it every day on that crooked thumb of his, broken from too many fights and not treated properly - unless properly was the Chateau's bathroom floor as Kie healed it with disappointed sighs and redundant _you need to be more careful next time_ s like that changed anything. 

The one on his ring finger is a curved metal ring with a huge cheap and worthless gem on the front that he had gotten through some member of his family that he had been able to pull up receipts on when Kie had started to question if he had stolen it. It had been a _Maybank_ thing, something passed down and given to him by Luke after his old man had hit him so hard the white of his eye had been red for a few days - it was something of an apology, Pope thinks but hates the older man passionately anyways. (He's never sorry _enough_ , never stops.) 

The pinky finger had been a gift from Kie, or borrowed and never returned but something none of the Pogues would have called _stealing_ or cited JJ's kleptomania for. No, sometimes things just ended up in each other's circuits - Kie had a bandana that Pope was sure he was with JJ the day he had stolen it and JJ and John B. will sometimes wear the other's shirt the day after the other had worn it. He has one of JJ's sweaters at his house and he remembers the exact day he got it. JJ had borrowed his company shirt, his _Heyward_ one with his name branded across the back and Pope had felt guilty jacking off while thinking about the appearance of it across JJ's spine - he had cum thinking about how JJ could finally escape that _fucking_ _name_ if he were to marry him, and a part of him thinks the purity of that thought outweighs the dirtiness of touching himself while thinking about his best friend. 

He thinks idly that the pinky ring was supposed to be one of those toe ring things girls wear sometimes, by the scrawling twisted shape of the shining silver in it. 

JJ wears it a lot. 

_JJ wears a lot of rings_ , he thinks, suddenly dizzy and he wonders what JJ must be thinking as he slips them over his fingertips, if he thinks they look badass - he wouldn't be wrong - or if he thinks of them like an honor, like armor. Like his gun. 

He wants to put them on suddenly. He thinks he does for a moment but that idea vanishes like fog and he realizes he wants to feel them press into his skin, form gentle cresses in his cheeks as JJ ducks down to kiss him - _not on the cheek this time -_ and maybe pressing into the skin of his stomach as they kiss, he imagines JJ over him, kissing him breathless and so fucking good at it from years of practice and magnetic in energy like he can't get enough either. Thinks of JJ's rings skating over his torso. 

He stops himself before he can imagine what JJ's ringed hand would feel like folding over his cock. 

He doesn't say anything. Just stares, wanting to hold JJ's hand maybe, and Pope Heyward trips and falls. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this! Kudos and comments are great and appreciated and inspire me to write me more though!


End file.
